5. Elizabethan Spymaster
Marvel ComicsAs Neil Gaiman loves old stuff, when he came to work for Marvel after years at DC he was offered the chance to right a story set in the distant past - the only proviso was that he needed to shoehorn superheroes in there still, somehow. In Marvel 1602, Gaiman gets around this little continuity snag by simply having all of the company's major characters turning up in Elizabethan times rather than the modern age, which makes for even more camp costumes (surprisingly) and less sci-fi tinged origin stories and activities for all the superheroes and villains alike. So, in Gaiman's retro vision, the X-Men are
more like witches than mutants, a similar but more timely group with supposed superhuman abilities that cause moral panic; Daredevil is a blind Irish minstrel who works nights as a freelance spy; The Four from the Fantastick are a group of adventurers who gain strange powers when they encounter an energy vortex whilst sailing; and Nick Fury is the Queen's intelligence officer who is in the process of training young orphan Peter Parquagh in the art of spycraft. Yep, back in the day Spidey would've been pals with Nick Fury. Oh, and he'd be a spy, apparently. There's a running joke in 1602 where Peter keeps nearly getting bit my spiders, only to quickly dodge their venomous bites at the last minute. As such, he never actually gains any powers of his own, besides talking all old timey, until the very end of the series. His story is continued in Spider-Man: 1602, where he adopts the dual identity of The Spider, and then all of the big Spidey storylines play out (Gwen Stacy, Norman Osborn killing her, Mary Jane, the appearances of The Lizard and Doctor Octopus). Except everyone has goofy names and wears ruffs.